23/02/25 | Raw
I wanted to convince myself that I was as they were When your brother's lover in that other room, not so very quiet in the presence of his touch And you told me that they were to be engaged Only children, I thought, it'd never last as nothing ever did back then
It's been ten years and some, and with some bitterness the set of cups which I brought you Which I doubt you ever wanted, least of all so when I said, these to you, for our joined future
I think upon it every now and then, How I'd like to have them back, for the way you never cared for them, and how they sat at the back of the room, and how they still do
And maybe you thought I would not notice But as always it was then When I knew for sure, though I had no recourse How nothing ever lasts, and that
No matter the distance For such pretty cups You'd break apart from me, and even now when my mother asks
I dare not tell her why I even brought them back.
Going only little further, past you and into that light mist which covers all, the memories and on to a hazy past How all of these words bring back to me not the porcelain, the fine silver tray, but words of rarest praise -
Spoken by the voice of a teacher, "What you wrote here today was real poetry," she states, when everybody else has already parted, and she says this As if unexpectedly
And I sat there then, not in wonder but with awareness: So few things of myself which I've given, Out of fear that like that Turkish tea set I'd come only to find it rotting on a shelf somewhere
I submit to my future, it says, and watches A hand discard it again.